Week 2 - Trial RAT
COMM1107 International Communication & Culture (Glen Donnar) Week 2 - Trial RAT Instructions: Each question is worth four points. You should assign a total of total of 4 points for each question. Your score will be the points assigned for each question corresponding to the correct answer (i.e. the best answer among the four alternatives. 1. Which, if any, of statements a, b, & c is TRUE according to Featherstone? Globalisation processes A. significantly threaten the ability of nation-states to articulate a coherent identity *B. None - they are all false statements C. are making the world more interconnected, unified and homogenous D. are the evenly experienced heightened consciousness of this greater interconnectedness 2. Which, if any, of the following statements is FALSE? "Imagined communities", e.g. nations, A. are represented through a set of coherent images and memories of the origins and distinctiveness of a people *B. offer a symbolic sense of belonging and fellowship and are invented out of nothing C. become more well-defined through power struggles with neighbours D. require communications technologies to construct and sustain them 3. Which, if any, of the following statements is FALSE? According to Featherstone, proponents of the 'cultural imperialism' argument mistakenly A. assume that audiences are manipulable and the cultural effects of the media are negative B. assume that local cultures will be erased by the proliferation of Western consumer goods *C. None - all of the statements are true D. offer little empirical evidence to support their claims 4. Which, if any, of the following statements is FALSE according to the authors? Sharing in Japanese fast-food restaurants occurs because *A. traditional eating patterns in Japan are groupist or collective B. None - all of the statements are true C. they strengthen traditional patterns of intergenerational commensality (eating together) D. they provide contexts for reinforcing emotive familial bonds 5. Which, if any, of the following is FALSE? Tourism A. offers various levels of staged authenticity or performing *B. cannot be used to maintain a sense of cultural identity C. is inevitably a highly regulated, ritualised and simulated encounter D. commodifies and trivialises cultures, establishing the host culture as exotica 6. According to Featherstone, which of the following, if any, is FALSE? *A. None - all of the statements are true B. Audiences are both manipulated and resistant, homogenised and fragmented C. All cultures are creole and plural in their origin D. External goods, information & images are often appropriated, reworked and blended with existing cultural traditions 7. According to the authors, which, if any, of the following statements is FALSE? Fast food, e.g. McDonald's, A. closely resembles historical patterns of consumption and the introduction of external phenomena *B. offers a chance to imagine, experience or construct the foreign Other C. has been indigenised by and adapted to the Japanese D. None - all of the statements are true 8. Which, if any, of the following statements is TRUE? Postmodernism represents *A. a new epoch or age, which is replacing the modern age B. an emphasis on plurality, contested meanings, contingency and ambivalence C. All of the statements are true D. the breakdown of monopolised forms of knowledge and cultural production 9. According to the authors, which, if any, of the following is TRUE? The popularity of fast food, such as McDonald's, A. All of the statements are true B. rests on ideas of cultural, political and economic hegemony imposed by the West *C. is representative of global processes in which culture is (re)interpreted and used to meet the needs and desires of society D. is a mixture of foreign modern and traditional Japanese culture 10. Which, if any, of the following is TRUE? In the contemporary global situation A. cultural identity is being destroyed by commodification and rationalisation B. the convergence of lifestyles and homogenisation of services in world cities is being replicated world over *C. identities are being formed and reformed using a range of symbolic material D. None - all of the statements are false